The present invention relates generally to messaging platforms and, more particularly, to techniques for formulating messaging platform capacity projections.
Messaging platforms are capable of accepting, storing, forwarding, and delivering electronic messages representing voice, text, email, photographs, video, files, music, graphics, or various combinations thereof. Information specifying the identity of a message recipient is explicitly provided to the messaging platform. Once the messaging platform accepts a message from a sender, the messaging platform either stores the message until the message is delivered to the recipient, or forwards the message to another messaging platform where the message is stored until delivered. The messaging platform is typically implemented using groups of specialized servers organized according to functionality. Each group of servers is adapted to execute a specific set of functions, such as data caching, multimedia storage, or processing standard post office protocol (POP) email messages.
Managing the capacity of a messaging platform is a difficult and tedious process. Existing messaging platforms are called upon to handle ever-increasing amounts of email traffic, while the volume of multimedia messages that include video, graphics, photographs, or audio is also increasing. These factors place increased demands on messaging platforms, with the effect that a shortfall in capacity is oftentimes first observed as a reduction in performance. Yet, using system performance to perform capacity planning is an unacceptable approach. A well-designed capacity management method should anticipate future growth in messaging platform usage so as to avoid declines in system performance during periods when total platform capacity is approached or exceeded. What is needed is a technique for automatically projecting messaging platform capacity so as to provide a messaging platform having a substantially consistent level of performance in response to predicted platform usage conditions.